


An Atlantean Reunion

by clararegenerated (roryfreisthler), roryfreisthler



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Everybody Lives, F/F, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Happy Ending, Jealousy, Multi, Multiplicity/Plurality, Mutual Pining, Past The Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Reunions, soft polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29985990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roryfreisthler/pseuds/clararegenerated, https://archiveofourown.org/users/roryfreisthler/pseuds/roryfreisthler
Summary: A while after setting off to take the long way around with Ashildr, Clara decides that she should set up a reunion between her Oswin Oswald echo (who lives in her body due to wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey... ness) and her ex-girlfriend, who thinks Oswin is dead.Neither Clara nor Ashildr realize quite how jealous this will make Ashildr.
Relationships: Ashildr & Clara Oswin Oswald & Ashildr | Lady Me's TARDIS, Ashildr | Lady Me & Oswin Oswald, Ashildr | Lady Me/Clara Oswin Oswald, Clara Oswin Oswald & Clara Oswin Oswald & Ashildr | Lady Me's TARDIS, Clara Oswin Oswald & Nina (Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks), Clara Oswin Oswald & Original Character(s), Clara Oswin Oswald & Oswin Oswald, Nina (Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks)/Clara Oswin Oswald, Nina (Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks)/Oswin Oswald
Kudos: 3





	1. Nina Newberry

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure I've posted this before and deleted it for some reason? Anyway, here it is again, with some minor edits.

“So, where are we headed to today?” Ashildr asks, bounding down the steps of the TARDIS and into the control room, where Clara is fiddling with the controls.

“The Atlantean Academy, 2013?” Clara says. For such a control freak, she’s relatively hesitant.

“Oh, did you land a temporary teaching job?” Ashildr walks up behind Clara and looks at the navigation screen.

“No, but I do miss Coal Hill,” Clara sighs a little. She’d returned in disguise to see the renovated school, seen the Doctor and a group of students facing off against the Shadow Kin and seen his reaction to seeing her name on the wall. She’s resigned herself to the fact that she’ll probably never see him again in order to avoid literally breaking his mind, but that doesn’t mean it hurts. “Nina Newberry. She’s in her senior year at the academy and thinks her ex-girlfriend is dead.”

“Who’s her ex-girlfriend?” Ashildr asks.

Clara bites her lip, realising that although she’s told Ashildr about the whole “some of my echoes live in my body with me after I jumped into the timestream” thing, she hasn’t gone into detail with Ashildr about their past, or love lives. “Oswin Oswald. And technically, she did die, she was just… reincarnated, I guess, in my body, when I jumped into the Doctor’s time stream. Or something like that.”

“So we’re going to pop off at the Atlantean Academy, you’ll put Oswin in charge, and she’ll find her girlfriend and they’ll have a happy reunion where she explains everything that has happened since she set off on Starship Alaska?” Ashildr asks.

“Yeah,” Clara nods. “That easy.”

Ashildr nods, and sidesteps Clara to face a different part of the console. Clara doesn’t really understand her reaction — maybe she’s preparing for Oswin Oswald to take control of the body, seeing as she’s not as close with Oswin.

This shouldn’t be a problem. It’s going to be Oswin seeing Nina (and probably kissing her), not Clara. Whatever flirtation Ashildr has with Clara isn’t going to carry over to Oswin, and they’re not even anything official yet, so Ashildr has no reason to be jealous.

Of course, other people taking over your body and kissing people you’re not interested in is never really simple.


	2. Negotiations

_Are you sure you’re okay with this?_ Oswin asks Clara as they change in Clara’s bedroom. They’re putting on something more appropriate for a student at the Atlantean Academy and less Victorian. More blue colors, and putting up their hair in a bun instead of it being loose.

 _Of course. I’d feel terrible if Nina was out there, missing you and thinking you were dead, when you could see her again if you wanted,_ Clara answers. She knows the body is technically her body and she doesn’t know what will happen if it turns out Nina is still there, but she also knows that Oswin kind of had a terrible childhood and parents who didn’t accept her bisexuality, so she never got much time with Nina and had to dismiss it as a phase. Oswin is younger than her, and it almost feels like she’s one of her students.

_I feel worse for you, with The Doctor out there and not remembering your past together,_ Oswin admitted. Clara sighed.  _It's the price of both of us continuing to live and not destroy the universe, so, I guess it had to happen._

“You look beautiful,” Ashildr comments, when Clara and Oswin emerge from the bedroom in a light blue blouse and dark skirt.

Clara blushes. “Thanks,” She looks at the navigational system of the TARDIS — they’ve landed where they’d meant to be. “I’m going to go now, I guess. Put Oswin in control.”

“How does it feel?” Ashildr bursts out. “Not being in control of your own body? I’ve never been there.”

“Weird at first, definitely,” Clara tells her, leaning against the console. “But my echoes are control freaks too, so I know they won’t mess things up too badly. Well, except for Miss Oswin.” Miss Oswin often is a control freak in a way that is contradictory to Clara’s desires. Thankfully, she mainly stays inside, taking care of Claire — the youngest echo.

“Okay, well… bye, I guess,” Ashildr puts a hand on Clara’s shoulder, and then drops it. “See you soon.”

Clara nods, and then does her best to concentrate on appearing inside and letting Oswin slip into control of the body. If she concentrates enough, she can sometimes even walk around the library that her echoes live in inside.

“We’re gonna ki-iss someone!” Inside, Claire is running around, amused that the older hers are planning _romance._

Clara laughs. Or, well, she supposes it’s Oswin laughing now.

“What’s funny?” Ashildr asks on the outside.

“Claire is teasing us about how Clara planned for me to kiss Nina,” Oswin smiles.

“Cutie,” Ashildr smiles as well, and they walk out of the TARDIS. They’ve parked it so it looks like another shop on the street a little bit away from the Atlantean Academy, although admittedly it looks a little out of place. Ashildr has locked the “door” and put a sign up saying “Closed”, so nobody should bother their TARDIS too much.

“Do you want me to come with you, or?” Ashildr asks, hesitating at the doorway of the academy.

“You can say you’re a student who’s interested in attending. You look a little young for it, but… it’ll be okay,” Oswin shrugs.

“I don’t look _that_ young,” Ashildr grumbles.

“You only look like you’ve aged about five years since you were a Viking. You look pretty young,” Oswin sticks out her tongue at Ashildr. “Anyway, see you soon, I’ve got to find my girlfriend!”

Oswin rushes off, looking considerably younger than the Clara Ashildr knows best. It’s a bit unsettling.

After signing in under the name “Oswin Oswald” and fielding several questions about how the staff thought she was dead, Oswin knocks on the door of an occupied chemistry lab that always was Nina’s favorite one. She can only hope that Nina is actually _in school_ today.

“One sec, I’m coming!” Nina’s voice comes through the door, and Oswin’s heart skips a beat. This is real. This is happening. She can’t believe it.

The door swings open, and Oswin comes face to face with the woman she’s spent most of the past few years missing. Nina’s mouth falls open, and she looks at Oswin.

“Oswin?” she asks, her voice a little choked up. “Is it really you? This is impossible!”

Oswin doesn’t think she’s very capable of speech at the moment, so she just nods.

Nina flings herself at Oswin, causing her to stumble back but thankfully not trip. She kisses Oswin’s cheek, and then takes her face in her hands, looking at it.

“It’s really you,” she breathes. “You look older but… it’s really you.”

Oswin nods.

Nina moves her hands a little further down, feeling Oswin’s neck. “But… you. You don’t have a pulse.”

Oswin bites her lip. “So, that’s the impossible part.”


	3. Impossible

An hour later, after a complicated explanation that ended in, “But hey, I’m back”, Oswin and Nina are busy kissing in Clara’s room in the TARDIS. And Ashildr is very uncomfortable.

It’s not that she’s homophobic — that would be a total joke, she’s a lesbian — or that Oswin is kissing someone who looks a bit younger than Clara’s body — everything _is_ still legal after all — so Ashildr doesn’t really know _what_ it is. She leans against the console of the TARDIS, figuring that it probably has something to do with Clara not really being present, which is weird whichever way you slice it.

The TARDIS beeps in a way that almost seems like laughter.

“Okay, what is it?” Ashildr looks at the TARDIS, staring her down — although she’s really not sure what part of the machine she should be staring down.

One of the screens flips open, and the TARDIS starts displaying photos of Clara that Ashildr has taken at various points of their travels.

“So I think the photos of her are beautiful, and she is too. Is that really a big deal?” Ashildr demands, acting a lot less professional than she did on the Trap Street.

The TARDIS beeps again, and Ashildr gets the distinct feeling that the TARDIS thinks she doesn’t even have to prove her point anymore.

“So what should I do?” Ashildr asks.

The photos disappear, and text scrolls across the screen instead. _Just tell her! You’re hopeless._

“Excuse me!” Ashildr pulls herself up to her full height, which really isn’t that tall.

“Arguing with our TARDIS? I thought it was my job to not get along with them,” Clara jokes, affectionately patting the console.

“Yes, I suppose I was,” Ashildr nods, glaring again at the TARDIS. She still hasn’t pulled the screen back.

“What’s on that screen? It looks new,” Clara asks, walking towards the screen.

Ashildr pushes the screen in. “Nothing important. So, what’s going on?”

Clara shrugs. “Not much. Mainly me getting bored watching my echo snog her girlfriend, so I requested to come back and walk around a little bit,”

Ashildr nods, but she can’t stop staring at Clara’s lips now that she’s mentioned snogging. Clara’s lips — and her _neck_ — do indicate that that has been happening. Ashildr feels an urge of possessiveness, which is ridiculous because she and Clara aren’t even dating.

“Would you be bored if you were the one doing the snogging?” Ashildr asks. She’s aware she’s being bold, but if the TARDIS is going to keep on shoving photos of Clara in her face, it’s probably not very long before she starts being a little more obvious around Clara herself.

“I mean, I like kissing beautiful women as much as the next sapphic woman, but Nina is a little young for me,” Clara shrugs.

“And I look even younger than Nina, so I suppose there really is no-one in this TARDIS right now who is appropriate snogging material,” Ashildr says.

“I mean, you’re an immortal who is even older than me, technically, and you know I kind of have a _thing_ for that. I wouldn’t rule you out,” Clara says, and then appears to notice what she said.

“Are you aware you just informed me that you wouldn’t mind snogging me?” Ashildr asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, your interest in my not minding indicates that you probably wouldn’t mind either, so I haven’t embarrassed myself,” Clara says, looking up at Ashildr with a mischievous expression.

“Sure. You tell yourself that,” Ashildr pulls in Clara for a kiss.

The TARDIS makes a rumbling sound that sounds an awful lot like a cat purring.


End file.
